Covid and Personal Revelation

“I was just sent a fantastic email from one of our great supporters here at The Firm Foundation, Laura Cooke from Australia. She wrote me a very insightful and heartfelt email about her experience with the current Covid situation we are encountering throughout the world. I felt her Spirit as she has struggled with many decisions in the past few years, and she wants to share some things she knows could help others.

I begin by saying, I agree with her heartfelt thoughts and by sharing her words, I pray that someone else may be guided by the Spirit on the choices they make. I don’t judge anyone who has taken the shot as we all have free agency. I am sure there are many that decided taking the shot was the right thing for them to do. My wife and I have strongly decided it is not right for us to take the shot. I have 5 or 6 family members who decided differently than I did, and they are good honorable members of our Church, as I am. This story is about relying on personal revelation for the important choices we are being asked to make.

I believe in our decision making process we need to take all information and research it then pray carefully about our personal answer. I believe Pres Nelson who said, “It is now time that we each implement extraordinary measures — perhaps measures we have never taken before — to strengthen our personal spiritual foundations. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.” Oct 3, 2021 President Russell M. Nelson

I also strongly believe what the Prophet Joseph Smith said, “We have heard men who hold the priesthood remark that they would do anything they were told to do by those who preside over them even if they knew it was wrong; but such obedience is worse than folly to us; it is slavery in the extreme; and the man who would thus willingly degrade himself, should not claim a rank among intelligent beings, until he turns from his folly. A man of God would despise the idea. Others, in the extreme exercise of their almighty authority have taught that such obedience was necessary, and that no matter what the saints were told to do by their presidents, they should do it without any questions. When Elders of Israel will so far indulge in these extreme notions of obedience as to teach them to the people, it is generally because they have it in their hearts to do wrong themselves.” Joseph Smith, (Jr. Joseph Smith, the Millennial Star, Vol 14, # 38, pages 593-595)

Now is a critical time to receive “Personal Revelation” about major decisions in our life. Satan has unleashed all his weapons, especially within our Church. He wants us to fail. Pres Nelson also said, “Does God really want to speak to you? Yes! “As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course … as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.”
You don’t have to wonder about what is true. You do not have to wonder whom you can safely trust. Through personal revelation, you can receive your own witness that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that Joseph Smith is a prophet, and that this is the Lord’s Church. Regardless of what others may say or do, no one can ever take away a witness borne to your heart and mind about what is true. I urge you to stretch beyond your current spiritual ability to receive personal revelation, for the Lord has promised that “if thou shalt [seek], thou shalt receive revelation upon revelation, knowledge upon knowledge, that thou mayest know the mysteries and peaceable things—that which bringeth joy, that which bringeth life eternal.” Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives by President Russell M. Nelson

Thank you Laura for your inspiring and timely words. Rian Nelson

“These are my thoughts on the First Presidency’s message in August and how we can see clearly what is happening.

The last 2 years have been a trial of faith for many.  There are some members who are awake to the evil conspiracy that has been foisted on the world in the name of a “pandemic”.  My family are some of those members.  We see this fake pandemic and the tyrannical measures (which is why the “pandemic” was instigated) as the beginning of the end.  What is about to happen to the world is the manipulation of all humans to take the mark of the beast.  The vaccines forced on us by our governments have been the pre-cursor to this mark of the beast system – which is a slavery system set up in the name of Satan to make sure all humans worship him.  The vaccine passports are the next step and soon there will be micro chips in right hands and foreheads.

Because of this knowledge that we have – from prayer, temple worship, studying scriptures, social trends, reading international white papers and the actual science – we made a decision at the beginning of last year when we knew there would be “vaccines” brought forward to be the ‘saviour’ of the world and that we would not partake of these ‘vaccines’.

Since mandates have been illegally imposed by our tyrannical governments and since the First Presidency sent their August message out, there has been a white elephant in the room (in some rooms there is outright conflict) in church families and church relationships.  I don’t see the tension in our ward, but we have experienced it in our extended family and in other church forums.  It is not a nice feeling to be accused by other church members and family members that we are not following the prophet, but we have stood our ground.  I am assuming there may be others out there who need this information to stand their ground and not take these shots.

Here is what I have learned:

In August, when the first presidency sent their message publicly to church membership urging them to be personally protected by getting vaccinated, we knew as a family that there was more to the message.  If a prophet speaks to the members and says exactly what the world says (on the surface) – there must be more to the message.  So we held out and did not get vaccinated (and still am not for the following reasons.)

1. From study and personal revelation we know that these shots are poisonous with evidence of mass deaths, mass maiming, mind control components and also containing aborted baby tissue and these shots are the beginning of the mark of the beast (Rev:13:16).
2. If you log into your church account and go to ‘quick links’ and click on “letters and notices” – scroll down from most recent official messages from the brethren and look for the August message urging members to be vaccinated.  You won’t find it.  It was not an official letter.  The message from the first Presidency was a public message.  There can be many inferences as to why, buy I don’t want to publicly speculate.
3. One must study messages from our prophets in their mind and in their heart.  We knew there is no way the Lord would tell us to get these poisonous jabs that have killed and maimed so many already and that have all the hallmarks of the mark of the beast system.  So we studied it out in our hearts and in our minds and found this interesting fact.  The historical definition of vaccine centers is that vaccines are dead attenuated viruses/bacteria mixed with other ingredients.  These vaccines would be administered to cause an immune response and thus preventing the person from getting the illness or getting symptoms.  In 2021 the CDC under the direction of the WHO changed the definition of ‘vaccine’ and it’s related topics by necessity to include the scope of the toxic shots being offered to the world.  The toxic shots by definition do not meet the historical vaccine definition because they are not dead attenuated viruses, they are MRNA gene therapies.  So now, according to the CDC (who is advising all governments on covid and vaccine protocol) the definition of vaccine is this:  Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose. So from this new definition we can ask some questions:

• 1.  Can the shots that so many members are taking from their governments be classified as vaccines under the old definition?  Ans: no
• 2.  Can the shots that so many members are taking from their governments be classified as vaccines under the new definition?  Ans: yes
• 3.  Can other preparations that are not the shots being offered by the world government be classified as vaccines under the new definition?  Ans: yes.  Any preparation that stimulates a person’s immune system to prevent disease can now be classified as “vaccine” under the new definition.  This means that members who do not want to take the poisonous shots from their governments can with a clear conscience take other vitamins, minerals, natural preparations and anything that will stimulate the immune system which are all considered ‘vaccines’ now.  In this way – all those members can with clearly state that they are following the prophet perfectly.
• Conclusion:  Those members who choose not to take the poisonous shots forced by their tyrannical governments are following the Prophet by choosing to take different vaccines.

I believe we will all be blessed as we follow the prophet in all that he has asked us to do and not focus on one hobby because we think we are perfect at it.  I know the prophet has asked us to be kind, charitable, inclusive, be part of the Lord’s youth battalion,  serve in the temple and make time for the Lord every day (to name a few invitations from his 31 general conference talks since being prophet).  These are the things we are trying to do in our home because we know that theses are the things we need to be doing to accumulate oil for our lamps for when the Bridegroom returns soon.

I am hoping this information can be helpful to someone else, because coming to this knowledge has given us personal fortitude to withstand the persecution which continues because of our decisions.  We know who we are, we know that we are following the prophet and the voice of the Lord and we have peace in these decisions.

About the Cooke Family

We are the Cooke family.  Nathan and Laura and our children, Joseph, Reuben, Sarah and Henry.  My parents were converts in the 70’s and Nathan’s family has a history of 4 generations of church members with his ancestors joining in 1920 in the north Brisbane Australia, City of Nambour.  We have lived and loved the gospel our whole lives and planned from when we were married to be the best missionaries to our children as we possibly could.  We have a firm foundation of studying scriptures and studying the words of modern and church history prophets.  We had/have a firm testimony of the gospel and the Book of Mormon and nothing could have shaken that, but we realized that for our children, growing up in a different world to ours, we wanted to give them a solid foundation of testimony experiences that would carry them through their lives.  Our lifestyle has been centered around temple worship, scriptures and prophets.  Even when our children were young, we would take them to the temple just to visit regularly to help them know where they belong.  Before they were baptized, we recommended they read the Book of Mormon and pray about it – which they all did, some of them had answers come when they were older.  When we went on family holidays, we focused on visiting family (young and old and cemeteries) and gathering stories and having experiences together, having family reunions and visiting other temples.  A few experiences during our early years of marriage helped us realize the tactics of the adversary in undermining testimonies. We recognized those tactics as:

1. The education system and the theory of evolution
2. The swamp that is media, and
3. The undermining of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith the prophet of the restoration.

We chose to never have a TV in our house and never have pop music or magazines and our children could have devices when they could afford them.  We controlled the media that came in our home and thus we could show our children what the Lord teaches, what the world teaches and how to defend their faith.  After some time – Nathan set about setting up blogs and Facebook pages for our family members (including our children) to have quick access to answers needed to hold onto faith.

To date, we have:

• A Book of Mormon Power FB page – with lots of article information from the FIRM foundation,
• A Dragons and Dinosaurs page – with scripture, science and social information about the young age of the earth,
• Our Cooke testimony building page – just sharing the trips we have had together to discover the Promised Land,
• 8 family history pages bringing together decedents of all of our great grandparents, and
• Missionary blog pages for our sons, so we could share with family and friends their missionary journey and share the gospel at the same time.

Somewhere during that time (approx. 2015), we came across a YouTube video by Wayne May about Book of Mormon history.  Before this time, I subconsciously assumed the Book of Mormon happened in Mesoamerica just because of church art – although my mind was always asking how Moroni moved all those plates to Cumorah.  So when we watched that first 3 hr. video, we were just amazed and the reality of the Heartland model and all fell into place and our testimony was strengthened immediately.  We immediately set about sharing all of this information with our family and friends.  Our children put up with us reading scriptures and talking about these 3 topics above until they could bear no more.  They understood. They believed. Then in 2017 Nathan was prompted to look at flights to the USA.  We have never been wealthy, but we looked and found some cheap flights and decided to use our savings on a trip that we believed would cement our children’s testimony of all of these truths.  We knew we couldn’t afford a Rod Meldrum tour, so we went about organizing our own.  We packed in Church History and Book of Mormon History into 10 days – and were even blessed to change itinerary and attend a stake fireside with President Eyring and Elder Holland before the face to face they did at Palmyra.  Every waking hour was spent visiting church history sites and sites that would strengthen our children’s testimony of the Book of Mormon and the science of Intelligent Design.  We visited  the Priesthood restoration site, all sites at Palmyra (including looking for mounds around the sacred grove and temple) and all sites at Kirtland and surroundings – realizing we were driving around many mounds in the area.  On top of this, we fit in the great circle, Alligator Mound, Columbus Ohio Temple (which was the only temple open on our itinerary) and The Ark Encounter in Kentucky.   The Ark Encounter is an amazing Ark museum built by Ken Ham who is an Australian.  He may not be a church member, but I believe he definitely followed the spirit in the mission he is accomplishing which is to show what scripture says about the age of the earth and showing how science agrees with scripture, that the earth is very young.  We had an amazing experience there and felt the spirit strongly.  There were visitors from all over the world from all cultures and we all felt so united in that place knowing that we were all Christians (brothers and sisters) and that the scriptures are true and that we can trust the Lord in all he says.  The only other places I have felt this feeling is attending general conference in person and in the temple.

So from that trip to the Promised Land – let me tell you the outcome.  We had a family prayer of gratitude in the sacred grove together.  We had a spiritual experience together that I cannot explain – it was like all of our hearts knew together without speaking that all of this is true, the church, the first vision, the Book of Mormon and our family relationships. We have never been the same since.  We have 4 children. They all know without a doubt who they are, what their purpose is and what is right and wrong.  Our 2 oldest sons have served missions and our youngest 2 are amazing temple and family history consultants in our ward.  Without us stumbling onto Wayne May’s video that day, who knows how different our lives and our children’s lives would be.  I am eternally grateful for you all; The FIRM Foundation team (And all associates – Joseph Smith Foundation, Isaiah Institute, Johnathan Neville, Darin Southam etc.) for your personal worthiness to be guided by the Holy Ghost to fulfill this personal mission and group mission which you have done.  Although we have never met you in person, we feel like you are some of our best friends.  We endeavor to share this with as many people as we can.

Thank you for all you do and may God bless your souls for your work and continue to reign his providence upon your personal and work lives to continue to help everyone in strengthening their testimonies of The Lord.

Kind regards, Laura Cook